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Both Regina and Rumple are playing a very dangerous game in which they are vying for the title of chess champion while Robin and Belle are pawn pieces. I’m not a huge fan of they way either Regina or Rumple is being written at present, but I do think they both were using darker tactics to try and protect the ones they love.
Exactly. I think there are two questions with this hornet’s nest issue of the HeartGate as @Phee so aptly named it. First, both Rumple and Regina come across as, essentially, using the same tactics on each other, which I think is meant to remind us that they’re cut from the same cloth, in that those tactics are what villains on OUAT like to use in general. Here’s the interesting implication: what that encounter established is whether or not Rumple was willing to call Regina on her bluff. As in, the old, unredeemed Regina WOULD throw anyone under the bus, no problem, if she felt that this was a way to get to her way. As would Rumple, of course. But Regina has been working on her redemption. In this case, she has to convey to Rumple that she’s still as “ends justify the means” as she used to be — and not just purely efficient Machiavellian logic either, but she’s essentially claiming that she’s kept that really cruel streak as well. Now, Rumple isn’t dumb, and I doubt that he thinks Regina is quite so willing to slide back, but he’s not putting his money on it. In other words, Rumple is in a weaker position not because Regina has one over him with Belle’s heart, however questionably obtained, but because he’s not willing to push her on her bluff, and has to accept her self-professed evilness as valid, however much he might think she’s full of it. In other words, Rumple is actually himself not willing to use Machiavellian means to test Regina’s bluff (i.e. call Zelena and escalate things).
Actually, the parallels in this episode were interesting. All three (ex)villains (Rumple, Regina, and Cruella) used something that their enemy loves to try to get the upper hand. As the audience, we actually know that only one was bluffing for sure — ironically, Cruella. This leaves the question, are Rumple and Regina also bluffing, and if push came to shove, how far would they go? I keep having this ‘unreliable narrator’ feeling from both this episode, and the previous one (though maybe that’s just shoddy writing). In any case, I think it’s interesting that this “ends justify means” game that everyone is playing in the episode is a slippery slope. And I really do think Rumple and Regina have a tendency to enable one another’s tendency to slip into old habits.
[adrotate group="5"]On the show that we’ve all watched Regina never said yes. And while the legal age is 18 in the United States we are talking about the Enchanted Kingdom where the King is the law and you are making the argument that Regina, the 18 year old girl has the agency to tell the King, who is the law, no, I don’t want to marry you even though my mother said yes. And your whole argument would be irrelevant if Regina is 17 instead of 18. Which is a real possibility.
I hate to play the devil’s advocate on that one because it’s a touchy issue, but by this logic, whether 17 or 18, if Enchanted Kingdom is at all modeled on the kind of Medieval Europe that the image of monarchic sovereignty you present comes from, then marriageable age is also way way younger. A 17 or 18 year old would have probably been considered a grown woman, and would be expected to have had children by then. Notions of adulthood are so very historically and culturally variable. Similarly, if we, say, take another example of popular “medieval” fantasy, such as Game of Thrones, while the actress who plays Danaerys is older, the books suggest that the character is 13 when she is given into marriage.
We might find that pretty questionable, but, again, if life expectancy is about 45, then it makes perfect sense that what counts as childhood is shorter. Does that mean that Regina at 17 or 18 would be more of an adult? Not necessarily, but she’d be expected to be, and no one would be cutting her any slack for being still “young and innocent.”
See…it didn’t come across as that mega big cruel to me…if anything it seemed like a practical mean joke a friend would play on another friend…like write them a love letter and tell them it’s from their secret crush. And besides…I’m sure Rumple’s relieved to know those weren’t Belle’s true feelings towards him. But as for it being cruelty for the sake of cruelty…okay, maybe a lot of vengeance was Regina’s reasoning for saying that, but come on…after what this man put her through the past day or so, even threatening her own soul mate and his son….payback’s a (beep).
Well, hmm. Lets see, there’s the effect that this would have on Rumple, and then there’s Belle’s perspective. Lets say Rumple has it coming. I don’t necessarily agree – to me it felt like crossing a line – but alright. Now, lets look at it from Belle’s perspective. Belle and Regina have a long, and not so positive history. Lets assume your, at best, frenemy, asks whether they can put you under for a bit, while they have the ability to essentially do with your unresponsive body whatever it is — for a good cause, mind you, to stop your crazy ex from doing some damage to their current boyfriend. Lets say that this is some kind of ‘hypnosis’ and they essentially can have your body do whatever it is they think is needed in order to save their love interest. I can imagine that, were I in that scenario, and should I find out that this frenemy made me kiss my ex in order to rub in his face that I have now hooked up with another guy, I would have serious serious qualms with the scenario. (a) She makes Belle kiss Rumple. Why do we assume Belle is OK with this again? (b) She rubs in Rumple’s face that Belle is now enjoying a much better lover (or whatever Will is). I don’t know, this seems to me not just needlessly cruel in that it’s simply a game of one-upmanship with Rumple, but absolutely unethical in relation to Belle.
It seems… high school level Mean Girls sort of drama. These are, presumably, adult people.
Emma’s not the only one with odd trust issues. Belle lets a woman who kept her prisoner for years in the EF and then locked in an asylum for 28 years just take her heart to aid in foiling her supposed true love. That is messed up. At least on Grimm, they deal with the emotional repercussions of the plot. Once totally ignores it all.
Ugh. This. But then again Belle and Henry have been largely reduced to the status of plot devices, and not very good ones, either.
Did anyone else find Regina’s ventriloquizing (heartriloquizing?) about the Rumple/Will comparison mildly distasteful? For someone allegedly reformed, even if she is currently enemies with Rumple, I found that to be a bit over the top. I actually think this parallels some of the broader tendencies in the writing of conflicts in OUAT at the moment, where there’s this emphasis on really below the belt verbal cruelty. Emma’s whole thing “I don’t trust [Snowing] with Henry’s life” is in that general category too, it seems.
Villains. They like to gloat.
Put me down for 30 cookies on Regina, 50 Cookies on Belle, and 10 cookies on Zelena being pregnant with RH’s babe too just to be sure.
Oh, yikes! Though… not impossible. I notice a glaring absence in this pronatalist speculation. 20 cookies on Emma.
Psycopathy/Sociopathy are normally the choice of mental illness for villains in the media. Cruella’s mother locking her in the attic actually makes sense because that is what a lot of people used to do with their “mad” relatives in the olden days
Exactly. Very Victorian. Mr Rochester’s mad wife in the attic, and all that.
I’m starting to wonder if the writers are using mental health issues as the go to motivations in their villains because with the 11/11 split, they’ve not got the time to flesh them out as much as they should. Sticking a mental illness “label” on means they don’t have to write why a character is like they are, they’re like it because they’re a “psychopath” or a “sociopath” etc.
I think you’re right, that sounds like a pretty likely explanation to me. Ironically, the strategy of having the mental illness label as explanatory device has ended up explicitly going against OUAT’s alleged canon: Evil isn’t born, it’s made … except when it isn’t. I think OUAT has always had mental illness as actually one of its pivotal themes: even in S1, between Regina’s little underground psychiatric ward, and Archie treating Henry for his supposed delusions, it seemed like it was a topic/theme they wanted to explore — from the punitive function of psychiatric asylums (a pretty long-standing trope), to the whole question of belief vs. evidence.
Since then, though, things have changed, and I think it’s equal measure writing, (which frankly has gotten quite cavalier in general) so no wonder it sometimes comes off as wildly insensitive, and how the characters are portrayed. So I think the 11/11 split also doesn’t let some of the guest actors playing episodic villains portray a progressive transformation, like progressively worsening symptoms. I think what made this episode (and the twist) effective was actually the way Victoria Smurfit portrayed her — she seemed unpleasant, but utterly with it until the very end. In this sense, we actually never see her in full on sociopathic mode until this episode. By contrast, Rebecca Mader plays up Zelena’s taste of bullying, which makes her a lot harder to sympathize with. I think the problem here, and that’s not just OUAT’s fault, that’s a general thing — is that mental illness gets used as a grab bag for explaining all kinds of violent and reprehensible behaviors, which of course stigmatizes the mentally ill more generally, and erases crucial differences.
Ahh! So many awesome points that I sort of want to quote all of you, but then my reply will be too long and break all the Internets 🙂 But I just want to say I’m glad I discovered this little community in its corner of the net, it makes my OUAT watching just a little bit less rage-filled these days…
As I was reading many of the comments on the beta/alpha stuff, I was struck by the sense that one of the problems I’m having with what OUAT did to Snowing — and mind you, in the interest of disclosure, I wasn’t in love with Snowing in the first place — is that it was one of the only positive relationships that had a long history. In other words, it’s a hard relationship to do/portray — it’s about marriage, and having kids, and sticking with each other after the initial head rush of passion has maybe worn off, it’s about still trying to keep things going while dealing with the hard stuff that life lobes at you. It’s not new and shiny — or rather, it shows that “shininess” takes lots of work. In this sense, while I’m not overly fond of how Snow and Charming have been written, and the note of self-righteousness, the relationship itself had potential for complexity. With the new developments it feels like what the writers are doing is taking a steamroller and methodically flattening it out, while also marginalizing them as increasingly unsympathetic. So my overall problem with OUAT is actually that we (the audience) are left with absolutely no positive model of relationships, romantic or not, that have depth, history, or potential for redemption (Neal and Rumple; SF; Neal and Henry; Regina and Henry; Rumbelle; and I’m sure I’m missing others), except for Frozen, but that’s because I don’t think it would have gone over well had they messed with Disney’s Frozen cult. (Though Frozen felt like a bit of an economically driven graft onto the main show anyway.)
And for those relationships that are seemingly still there and redeemed — say, Henry and Regina — the message is that they are simply not enough. It’s fine to pursue a romantic interest, don’t get me wrong, but insofar as the heart of the show was about the complexities of family, by now Henry has been made more or less irrelevant. His presence in the show is, for lack of a better word, perfunctory, except when he’s occasionally used as a (bad) plot device.
What we’re left with is the sense that only “new” and “shiny” is worthwhile, while old and worn and full of baggage is doomed to crash and burn on the rocks of boredom and taken-for-grantedness (Henry and his moms), past mistakes (SF, Snowing), and old habits (Rumbelle). On the one hand, it panders to our culture’s obsession with romantic love as the happily ever after. On the other hand, it outright dismisses what in fact does come after, which is all the more complicated, messy, mundane ways in which relationships must be kept alive. And not just dismisses it, OUAT either wrecks it or devalues it. And I might even be fine with, say, Neal and Emma never getting together in the end, if they were simply working on being friends, and good parents to Henry. Or if Rumbelle fell apart along a different set of fissures, for example because the relationship is premised on both incredible inequality and vulnerability (on both sides, actually), rather than on the evisceration of the two characters into 1-dimensional stereotypes. It’s fine not to have “twue wove” of the Cupid variety triumph every time. But why are we left with nothing but an injunction to what, frankly, feels like a brand of “serial monogamy?”
This is important
On the topic of shipper culture, I came across this about how different people relate to different ships, and I think it gives some interesting tools for thinking about OUAT. Essentially, I thought the whole idea of the “main” vs “beta” couple is interesting. From that perspective, Rumbellers and SF (with which I’d have probably identified at least at one point) would qualify as shipping the “beta” couple — the one where more is left to the imagination and interpretation, where the pairing is either not obvious, or emotionally complicated, and where you have to pay attention to context, subtext, and history. By contrast, with the “main” couple, the focus is more on the overt/passionate/probably gender-stereotypical relationship, which, back to @RG’s comments, explains why we now have to deal with the “cavemantic” disaster that is CS (*runs and hides before she gets clubbed over the head by angry CSers*) So, the question becomes, as it might be with OUAT, what happens when a show begins to sink all its “beta” ships?
The other thing I appreciate about the analysis is the distinction the writer is drawing between love story and romance.
“A romance is a story that builds its characterisation around idealising the concept of romantic love. A love story takes that characterisation and tries to say something more fundamental about human nature.”
You might not share the writer’s preference (love story over romance), but I think with OUAT maybe we saw a show that began with love stories or potential love stories (lets call them romantic subplots), and then largely shifted to having romance as its central moral framework, with some (at this point quite unconvincing) lip service that this is about human relationships more broadly.
Just a thought…
Zelena comes across to many, even myself, as a whiny brat who wants it all, but will have to realize that everything she didn’t get may have been the best thing for her. Is she wicked and done much much wrong? Heck yeah! Is she irredeemable? Heck no!
I disagree. I think Zelena is irredeemable at this point. She has no remorse or regret for what she’s done and she continues to do these terrible things all because Regina was born and kept by Cora.
Oooof, with sisters like these, who needs enemies? Yeah, I’m not convinced that Zelena is meant to be redeemable… Or at least, I’m not convinced that the combination of how the character is written, and how Rebecca Mader plays her leaves much room for reformation. I mean, Regina is such an awesome character because, even at her darkest, there was always a depth to how Lana Parilla portrayed her, such that it was possible for the audience to conceive there were layers underneath. Regina, at her worst, was terrifying and objectionable, but she never gave the impression of total crazy. To me, Zelena comes off as stark raving mad — essentially, she’s a full on psychopath with sadistic tendencies. With the emotional development of an 11 year old. If I were Regina, and wanted to keep her around, I’d be prepping a room in that hospital basement of hers. Because, again, the way that character is portrayed, her evolution is in the direction of “I ate her liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.” 😛 Not to say that Rebecca Mader doesn’t do a great job – she does. The character is absolutely vile. I just won’t be rooting for redemption any time soon — serious psychiatric help, yes.
Zelarian was planned before Season 4, a week after Zelena’s death according to Adam. So…it had always been planned for Marian to end up being Zelena because Adam and Eddy love the character and Rebecca Mader.
Ok. That’s some impressively advanced planning. So why so many plot holes?
Because Regina is A and E’s favorite. It’s literally just that.
*sigh* I hear you. What I guess I’m feeling grumpy about is the way Zelena’s presence is so obviously for PLOT and for cheap thrills, that it fails to help develop the other characters beyond already preexisting dramas. It almost feels like recycled script, except on the same show, in other words, the TV equivalent of being given a piece of pre-chewed petrified gum, on the pretext that, clearly, you appeared to enjoy it the first time around.
